Friday, January 18, 2013

Don’t give burgers to charity, says Capuchin friar

No decision has yet been made on how to dispose of the 10m burgers
taken off the shelves due to horsemeat contamination — and one of the
country’s busiest emergency food providers has said it would not give
them to its clients.

The
Capuchin Day Centre on Dublin’s Bow St hands out as many as 1,500 food
parcels to people each Wednesday, and can have 600 people a week in for
breakfast.

The lengthening queues for food parcels has been an
illustration of the growing hardship experienced by many families, but
yesterday Br Kevin Crowley dismissed any idea that the unwanted burgers
would be used by charities.

“Most certainly not,” said the
Cork-born friar. “The most important thing for us for the people we are
feeding is that they have the best of food. We have the upmost respect
for the people we deal with — if the ordinary person cannot take it [the
burgers], why should we give them to the poor?”

However,
Brendan Dempsey, regional vice president of St Vincent de Paul, has said
he was confident charities would accept some of the burgers if they
passed all food safety standards. “It’s sinful to waste food when people
are hungry. So long as the burgers come up to food safety standards and
people are aware of what is in them, I wouldn’t have a problem with
making them available to people,” he said.

A spokesperson for
the ABP Food Group, which owns Silvercrest Food, confirmed the burgers
were in storage and no decision had been made as to how to dispose of
them. It has received suggestions, however, including that they be
passed on to charities or turned into pet food.

Oliver
Williams, who operates Twist soup kitchens said: “I have people who
would be glad for that food. You can’t waste it, it is good food at the
end of the day.”